New Zealand to many is 'Middle Earth', home of the Lord of the
Rings trilogy, but it was also the last major land mass on the
planet to be settled by humans. The country was catapulted kicking
and screaming from the stone age to the space age within 200 years
of Captain Cook setting foot there... Who really got to New Zealand
first? Which version of the Treaty of Waitangi is the most
accurate? What impact did a massive asteroid strike in the 15th
century have on human settlement in the South Pacific? IT'S A STORY
THAT WILL SURPRISE YOU The biggest known earthquake-caused tsunami
can create 60 metre walls of water - around six times larger than
the Japan tsunami. This New Zealand one created by what is now
known as the Mahuika comet strike - after the Maori god of fire -
was what scientists call a "mega-tsunami," 220 metres tall, 22
times higher than the Japanese tsunami, as it thundered up the
South Island's east coast. Waves that high have been known to
penetrate up to 45km inland in other parts of the world. To put
this in perspective, if you were dining in the revolving restaurant
at Auckland's Sky Tower, 190 metres off the ground, you would still
be 30 metres (100ft) underwater. A STORY TOLD WITH HUMOUR: When
dawn broke the following morning, more canoes pulled alongside and
translator Tupaea remarked to Cook the overnight guests were
yelling over the rails to their friends, "It's OK to come on board,
the white men don't eat people " "From which," Cook wryly and
cautiously noted in his journal, "it should seem that these people
have such a Custom among them." IN THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO WERE
THERE: "About dinner time three canoes came alongside of much the
most simple construction of any we have seen, being no more than
the trunks of trees hollowed out by fire without the least carving
or even the addition of a washboard on their gunnels. "The people
in them were almost naked and blacker than any we had seen - only
21 in all - yet these few despicable gentry sang their song of
defiance and promised us as heartily as the most respectable of
their countrymen that they would kill us all." A STORY OF MISPLACED
TRUST: Turning to Lieutenant Roux, du Fresne added: "How can you
expect me to have a bad opinion of a people who show me so much
friendship? As I only do good to them, assuredly they will do me no
evil." AND THE CLASH OF CULTURES: By seven pm, word came through
from the ships that "a great many more canoes, full of natives, had
landed on the island." This was an all-out war involving, on one
side, a battalion-strength team of Maori warriors drawn apparently
from numerous tribes (about as many warriors as the current New
Zealand Army can comfortably muster for any single military tour at
the moment), and on the other 50 armed Frenchmen, most of them
sailors. One side, of course, had gunpowder. The other side
desperately wanted gunpowder. AND LESSONS LEARNED THE HARD WAY:
Northland Maori in particular were beginning to amass quite a
collection of captured weaponry, from the tempered steel of
cutlasses and swords to the power of the mighty musket. The
cardinal rule - never bang a casket of gunpowder - had been tested
and learnt by the Ngati Uru of Whangaroa - and Maoridom's
inevitable catch-up with European technology and power was well
underway. There was, however, an even more potent force sailing
over the horizon: missionaries. IN SHORT, IT'S OUR STORY...a story
of migrants, the people they met, the future they forged.
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